The town has no clothes on!

Thursday

Jun 18, 2009 at 12:55 PM

By Leah Ireland: With all the talk of the naked man near schools, a beloved member of our community found with child porn, and the sexual abuse of children rising in the county, no one has come out in support of the children — instead we blame the paper for reporting it!

Leah E. V. Ireland

With all the talk of the naked man near schools, a beloved member of our community found with child porn, and the sexual abuse of children rising in the county, no one has come out in support of the children. Instead we blame the paper for reporting it!

Why haven't parents guarded the school and gently persuaded the naked man to walk elsewhere? Why don't we know the identity of all the children in the discovered porn collection and see to their welfare? Why aren't there concerns about the reported rise of child abuse in our area?

Everyone is falling all over themselves being loving and accepting, admiring, broad-minded and un-judgmental. Supporting the rights of the perpetrators is so advanced, "with it," politically correct — whatever that is. This isn't the '60s, and drawing a line and getting uptight is imperative.

What is the difference between the Vatican's denial of pedophilia among priests and the liberals' denial of the perverts among us? Didn't Jesus warn that those who harm children — even with indifference — will suffer so badly it is better they not be born? Even if you don't believe that, you have to admit, sex with children is as low as humans can go.

What's wrong with zero tolerance? Does it sound too limited, conservative? No, we respect the naked man's spirit and see a difference between him and the trenchcoat flasher that visited our schools when we were young. Really?

We go to the moon but we don't get that child abuse is soul-, spirit-, and mind-murder. Some religious fundamentalists let men do what they want in the privacy of their own homes. Liberals let strangers do what they want in public in their own town.

Until the policy is: "not in this home," "not in this church," "not in this town," we condone abuse as bad but an inescapable thing. A naked body isn't always beautiful, it reflects what we eat, think and do, in a manner that's a metaphor for who we are, and that is best left to our own mirrors or a nudist colony.

And yes, Free Souls, nakedness is always charged with sexuality however you deny it. Those are natural normal healthy reactions, which is why they should also be among consenting adults of any race or gender. That's what should be guaranteed in the Constitution, not the freedom to expose our genitals.

As for our neighbors' children, whether across the street or around the world, we are not quite heart and soul evolved enough to care. We can go to the moon, but we still don't get that child abuse is child torture. And yes, it happens in nice neighborhoods.

Now that women are empowered, the blame goes to mothers who look the other way to keep the man at home, all the way to the women judges who uphold the law that allows child prostitution to make up one-fourth of the GNP of many Asian countries. Men aren't going to stop it. When, oh when, are women?